iOS App Icons and Launch Images

Published December 17, 2014 by
Paul Lefebvre

Before you submit to the App Store, you’re going to want to have app icons and launch images for your iOS apps. Here’s some information about them.

An iOS app requires app icons in up to 12 sizes to support the different iOS devices. In order for these icons to be included with your app, you have to copy them into the App Icon folder of your iOS project. More importantly, the icons have to have very specific names so that iOS recogizes them. You can read about the specific sizes and the names in the Launch Images and App Icons page of our documentation.

Launch Images are static images that iOS displays while your app is launching (or loading). These are often static images of the initial screen of your app, but they can also serve as “splash” screens.

There can be up to 9 different sizes of Launch Images that you can include with your app and, like with App Icons, they all need specific names. Launch Images are also important for displaying your app on iPhone 5 (4″) and larger screens. Because of the way iOS works, without an iPhone 5 Launch Image, your app will only display at the iPhone 4 (3.5″) screen size.

All this might seem a bit complicated, but we have a way to make this a bit simpler. In your Xojo installation you will find the ImageMaker tool. You can use this tool to quickly create a folder of App Icons and Launch Images that you can just drag into your iOS project.

On the App Icons tab, choose the image you want for your icon and select the sizes you want to create. Click “Create Icons” to create a folder of icons that you can drag into your project.

On the Launch Images tab, you can create blank (but in the selected color) launch images of the selected sizes to output to a folder you can drag to your project.

For more information about App Icons and Launch Images, you can also refer to Apple’s Human Interface topics on App Icons and Launch Images.